Articles of furniture having drawers, such as cabinet assemblies, typically include drawer slides for mounting the drawers to the cabinet assembly and for providing a way to move the drawer between a fully closed position within the cabinet body to an open position with the drawer extending outward from the cabinet body. Standard drawer slides tend to be mounted in pairs, with one on each of the left and right outer sides of the drawer, or in an undermount format beneath and along respective outer left and right edges of the drawer. In such configurations, on each side of the drawer, one drawer slide member is attached to the cabinet body and a second drawer slide member is attached to the drawer. Bearings, such as ball or roller bearings, typically are disposed between the drawer slide members for smooth movement of the drawer relative to the cabinet body. The bearings may be organized and located within a bearing retainer. Also, there may be a third drawer slide member coupled to and between the first and second drawer slide members, with a corresponding additional set of bearings, to permit further extension of the drawer from the cabinet body.
In both the standard and undermount configurations, it is desirable to assist a user in closing a drawer, to prevent rebound of the drawer, and to tend to hold the drawer in a closed position. There are numerous self-closing drawer slide devices designed to be engaged as a drawer is being closed and reaches a predetermined distance from the cabinet face. Such devices often incorporate a spring to help pull or push the drawer to the fully closed position. It is common for these devices to include a latching member that is used in controlling the movement of the drawer relative to the cabinet body within a pre-selected range of motion of the drawer. Such prior art devices often include a pin or tab to engage the latching member to move it from a latched to an unlatched position or vice versa. In turn, either the latching member or pin commonly is associated with one of the drawer sides or slide members, while the other corresponding component is associated with another drawer slide member.
While such a latching member and pin assembly function for their intended purpose, they tend to transmit fairly high forces to the user at the transition point of engagement or disengagement of the latching member, as occurs upon release when the drawer is being moved in an outward direction toward an open position and reaches the end of the travel of the latching member under the influence of a spring, or upon initial engagement when the drawer is being moved in an inward direction toward a closed position. The prior art devices tend to have a spring with an end that is moved in essentially a one-for-one ratio relative to the movement of a latching member, such that the force generated by the spring is increased linearly as the latching member is moved outward with the drawer, until the latching member is released and parked in an armed position. This results in operation with an on-off or jerky feel with respect to the influence of the spring when the latching member enters and exits the armed position.
Thus, it is common among the prior art closing devices for the spring force resisting the opening of the drawer to continue to increase in a consistent manner until the latching member reaches the end of its travel, and then releases the drawer, resulting in an abrupt transition from a maximum pulling force resisting the opening of the drawer to no resistance to further opening of the drawer. This construction tends to result in a jerking motion that is unsettling to the user and may cause the contents of the drawer to shift abruptly. Similarly, when closing the drawer, the influence of the spring is brought on rather suddenly when its peak force is applied upon initial reengagement of the latching member and release from its latched position.
This undesirable transition is due, in part, to the need to have the spring maintain a sufficient level of spring force even when the drawer is nearly in a fully closed position, so as to be able to completely close the drawer and to prevent the drawer from rebounding to an open position if pushed inward rapidly, such as when a drawer is being slammed closed. The high spring force at the point of release or reengagement of the latching member also can result in undesirable noise due to the abrupt movements of the latching member into or out of an armed position and the level of force transmitted by the latching member to the complementary component on the other drawer slide, drawer or cabinet member.
It is desirable to provide a closing device for drawers that can be incorporated into a drawer slide while avoiding the potential disadvantages of self-closing drawer slides that use a latching member that experiences a consistent increase in spring force when a latching member is being moved from a first position when a drawer is closed to a second position when the drawer has been moved toward a fully open position. It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and provided for purposes of explanation only, and are not restrictive of the disclosure, as claimed. Further features and objects of the present disclosure will become more fully apparent in the following description of a preferred embodiment and from the appended claims.
It should be understood that the drawings are not to scale and that actual embodiments may differ. It also should be understood that the claims are not limited to the particular examples illustrated or combinations thereof, but rather cover various configurations of closing devices for drawers.